


portamento

by capo (gliss)



Category: Free!
Genre: Canon Compliant, Gen, pianist sousuke, pretentious classical music references
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-26
Updated: 2014-07-26
Packaged: 2018-02-10 11:45:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 503
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2023908
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gliss/pseuds/capo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>sometimes, used interchangeably with anticipation.</p>
            </blockquote>





	portamento

~

 

 

Sousuke doesn’t believe in cushioning phrase endings.

His music sounds like glass and steel. Glass, for its transparency, its abruptness. Every note inked across the manuscript rings clear as a bell against the keyboard, present and precise with regards to length, articulation, volume. Steel, for its strength. Silver-grey, for the color of his tone. He builds a fortress within the music, structures it clearly and steadily, settles foundations across the piece with the force of someone anchoring a house into place. He conquers Rachmaninoff and Liszt and flashy Chopin etudes, bursts octaves and arpeggios through pages of Prokofiev and Muczynski and the unsung heroes that rose with a roar from Samuel Barber and Edward MacDowell and Aaron Copland. — American music, Sousuke thinks, grasping the almost-pentatonic melodies between his thumb and his forefinger and making each note dash, afraid to linger, for more time than was necessary, on anything —

American music is suited to the rapid pace it set for itself and also for the culture it was born from. But he sits with the windows blown wide and his eyes shuttered (or is it the other way around?) and romance moonlighting across the music desk, Debussy and Schumann flitting between quiet Chopin nocturnes. The nineteenth century was when the line between major and minor blurred and smeared, where modulation was as frequent as a breath. Sousuke’s fingers skeleton over the keys, pulling out a note here, a rest there. He thinks he might be afraid of the unknown. He thinks he might be afraid of opening himself up, too.

_( — Let me be one of those friends, then. )_

His hand drops on an f minor chord, easy, powerful, thumb and pinky gripping the sound and forcing it from the hammered strings. It clangs harshly against the frame of the piano.

In a triad, there are three notes: the root, the third, the fifth. The root: that would be Rin, the rock, the foundation. The third, Momotarou, a necessary temperament. The fifth, Aiichiro, the hollow arch of support. — Then where did that leave him, Sousuke?

Sousuke plays with the f minor chord, watches the inversions ripple and thunder up and down the piano, his hands racing, his body tense. Clair de Lune, he thinks. It’s a tentative, fluttering piece, something Rin asked him to play long ago, when his mind could accomplish more than his body and therefore allowed him to dream beyond his limitations. It’s a tentative, fluttering piece with starts and stops and restarts, with more softness than could be cradled by his steel-ribbed sound. It breathes against his chest and tickles his cheek and drags along the line of his lower lip, pulls the weights on his eyelids down, down down. It leaves his arms feeling empty and uncertain, unable to slice through the water any more than a wishing penny. It’s a dangerous piece, needle-edged, whip-stitched with pinpoint heartbreak.

 _This_ , Sousuke thinks,  _is what Rin wants from me_.

He breathes, opens his eyes, and does his best to melt his steel.

 

 


End file.
